Passing Knots Introduction: A Rope Rescue and Rigging Primer You Must Know - Using The MPD (Part 1)

I will admit, back in the day, the scariest thing for me to learn and then show people, was how to pass knots on either raise or lower. I would downplay the whole process in an effort to "deny myself the opportunity to learn something super cool" because I just didn't get the practical steps. Like ballroom dancing (which I hate!)... There are a few critical steps to learn but once you know them, you have it for life!

Generally there are two primary reasons for passing a knot.

When the ropes won't reach the ground and the ropes need to be adjoined to make the system and travel distance work.

When the rope becomes damage but must still remain in active duty during an evacuation.

The hope is that a knot can be passed in a safe place and on the ground, but this just isn't real life. Often the "package" is under load and precautions need to be taken to simply "not drop the package" when transferring the load and things can get muddled when nightfall hits, the rains come and sleep deprived people are doing their best.

There are endless ways to accomplish this task and the ones we are bringing to light can have modifications and equipment replacements in ways many of us may not have thought about. So we'll start with the basics and move from there.

This topic came about as a question from one of our RLA members. A simple question about passing knots, but the simple got more complex when team dynamics became a source of frustration and multiple techniques with a variety of equipment selections added to the challenge and in the end... their learning was hampered. Remember, a person's life is on the other end of the rope, so screwing up here is not an option. Only move past the current when mastery of that current model has been attained.

Living in Bend (which is only 20 miles from Sisters where RLA is located), we have the benefit of dreaming up ideas a few times week in our Neverland studio. This Mini Session is the first of many to come and are essentially quick and to the point. We normally get an idea and just run with it, sometime using only an iPhone... which is what we did here. Other times, we'll break out the Zs, Blackmagics, REDs, Sonys and who knows what else.

Why am I telling you about all this latter stuff? Because we are soon releasing our Q&A page where our members are free to ask their questions.

So without "further ado", here are a couple of the videos we produced on Passing Knots.

About The Author:

Beginning his career in the rescue and rigging world as a “blue collar” SAR member with Deschutes and Jefferson County teams. Lance Piatt owns and operates Red Ibex Solutions, a sales and marketing wheelhouse blending rope rigging education and exquisite imagery with equipment knowledge and understanding; housing Rigging Lab Academy and Rescue Response Gear…
Lance is producing high-end video education, working with several experts and instructors to produce unique series of “how to videos” and courses for rope rigging:
Such as; the first ever full-length rescue training DVD, 'Tower Rescue', released in fall of 2005. As well as a series of scenario-based rescues ranging from cave rescue to cliff rescue.

[…] you’ve already seen part one of this series Passing Knots Introduction: A Rope Rescue and Rigging Primer You Must Know – Using The MPD (Part 1) where we showed how to pass a knot through a CMC MPD on both raise and lower. Now we’ll show […]